Review: Sapphire Radeon R9 Fury Tri-X OC

Introduction

AMD unveiled the Fiji-powered Radeon R9 Fury X graphics card just under a month ago. Outfitted with a new, space-saving memory technology called HBM and packing in more GCN cores than you could reasonably shake a big stick at, AMD played on the small-yet-powerful theme by watercooling the 7.5in-long card.

The $649 Fury X's graphical punch isn't hard enough to dislodge the rival GeForce GTX 980 Ti or GTX Titan X from the top of our performance charts, particularly at a 4K resolution where it matters most. But at least AMD is back in the high-end graphics game.

Yet stock has been in severe constraint for AMD's best-ever single-GPU graphics card while news of other Fiji-based models - Fury and Fury Nano - has tempted some enthusiasts to hold fire.

Today, AMD and select partners are releasing the Fury graphics card that takes much of the goodness of the X model but reduces price by $100 into the bargain. Enter air-cooled Fiji.

Radeon R9 Fury X

Radeon R9 Fury

Radeon R9 390X

GeForce GTX Titan X

GeForce GTX 980 Ti

GeForce GTX 980

Launch date

June 2015

July 2015

June 2015

March 2015

June 2015

September 2014

Codename

Fiji XT

Fiji Pro

Grenada XT

GM200

GM200

GM204

DX support

12.0

12.0

12.0

12.1

12.1

12.1

Process (nm)

28

28

28

28

28

28

Transistors (mn)

8,900

8,900

6,200

8,000

8,000

5,200

Approx Die Size (mm²)

596

596

438

601

601

398

Full implementation of die

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Processors

4,096

3,584

2,816

3,072

2,816

2,048

Texture Units

256

224

176

192

172

128

ROP Units

64

64

64

96

96

64

Peak GPU Clock/Boost (MHz)

1,050

1,000

1,050

1,076

1,076

1,216

Peak GFLOPS (SP)

8,602

7,168

5,914

6,611

6,060

4,981

Peak GFLOPS (DP)

537

448

739

207

189

156

Memory Clock (MHz)

1,000

1,000

6,000

7,012

7,012

7,012

Memory Bus (bits)

4,096

4,096

512

384

384

256

Max bandwidth (GB/s)

512

512

384

336

336

224

Default memory size (MB)

4,096

4,096

8,192

12,288

6,144

4,096

Memory type

HBM

HBM

GDDR5

GDDR5

GDDR5

GDDR5

Power Connectors

8+8-pin

8+8-pin

8+6-pin

8+6-pin

8+6-pin

6+6-pin

TDP (watts)

275

275

275

250

250

165

GFLOPS per watt

31.28

26.06

21.50

26.44

24.24

30.19

Current price (Newegg)

$649

$549

$429

$999

$649

$499

Almost as fast

Radeon R9 Fury uses the same gargantuan silicon as the X model and this means packing 8.9 billion transistors into a die size marginally smaller than 600mm². Shaving performance and thus providing meaningful differentiation between the two Fury cards, AMD drops the number of compute units from 64 to 56. This has the effect of reducing the total number of processors to 3,584 and associated texture units to 224. Everything else, architecturally speaking, remains the same.

The peak boost speed is reduced from 1,050MHz to 1,000MHz, as well, and the combination of 512 fewer shaders and a lower core frequency reduces peak shading and texturing power by approximately 17 per cent, so if a games engine is heavily reliant on those two factors, the Fury X and Pro will be split by a reasonable degree.

The backed, meanwhile, is identical, so lots of bandwidth from 4GB of HBM memory, and we're glad to see that speeds haven't been reduced in the transition to the Pro variant. Carrying on the performance analysis, if a games engine is far more bound by the ROP/memory throughput then Fury X and Pro will benchmark at similar levels. We expect to see Fury-to-Fury performance fluctuate depending upon game title and engine.

Back to air

Fury X's physical appearance is dominated by the all-in-one watercooling unit that promotes the card's small dimensions. Helping keep costs in check and enabling select partners to differentiate their Pro cards from one another - something which is intrinsically difficult on the homogenised X - all cards are equipped with established air-cooling developed by said partner.

News on the grapevine is that Sapphire and Asus will be the first to market with air-cooled Fury cards, and it just so happens that we have a Sapphire Radeon R9 Fury Tri-X OC 4GB (phew!) in for review today.